Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Speculation! (the sequel)

So in my last post i said that there was a lot of speculation about what would be announced in the out-of-cycle stake conference that our stake had this past Sunday.

And so, you may ask, what was the big announcement? Well, the answer is [drum roll, please]…

Absolutely nothing.

Yes, that’s right, much to my surprise the big announcement matched precisely what i was hoping for, if only to teach people that speculation doesn’t work. There had been a number of general authorities in town to do some training for the stake presidencies, and the stake presidencies asked for them to preside at specially-called stake conferences. That is all.

I will, though, say that there was a bit of a bait-and-switch. A member of the quorum of apostles was in town, but he spoke at the next stake over—we got a member of the quorums of seventy (and the next stake over got a member of the presiding bishopric, and i think there was another stake with another member of the quorums of seventy present, but i kind of lost track). Of course, i was out of town the previous Sunday, so it may have been announced then—i don’t know for sure.

But the general authority who was present at our stake had a good sense of humor about so many people expecting some big announcement—he got up and told us he had one: “Keep the commandments.” It was delivered quite nicely as a laugh line, but i think the more serious point underlying it was both well delivered and well taken.